Many client/server applications that might be supported over a wireless link have "dialects" that are application specific and which offer an opportunity for tokenized communication between the client and server to reduce communication overhead. There are many different types of compression/decompression techniques which are based upon a content-specific codebook of one form or another.
In order to decompress a compressed message sent to the client by an application in the server, the client must have a copy of the codebook utilized by the application for compressing the message. When necessary, different codebooks can be applied to server-to-client communications as compared to those applied to client-to-server communications. In a wireless messaging system, however, it would be prohibitively wasteful of air time to transmit a codebook whenever an application has a message to send somewhere. Furthermore, every client in the wireless messaging system does not necessarily require communications with every application supported by the server.
Thus, what is needed is a method and apparatus in a wireless messaging system for supporting application-specific compression/decompression techniques without expending an unnecessarily large amount of air time in the process. The method and apparatus preferably also will limit the distribution of codebooks in accordance with client needs.